Acknowledging the achievements of homebuilders, remodelers, and industry professionals who strive to meet and/or promote green-construction standards has become an increasingly prominent annual rite for the National Association of Home Builders as the market for homes meeting those standards grows.
On Monday, during an dinner at the thirteenth annual National Green Building Conference in Salt Lake City, thirteen honorees took a walk to the front of the room to receive National Green Building Awards, which this time around recognized five single-family-home projects, two remodeling projects, a multifamily project, and five green-building advocates. New-home and remodeling projects entered in most categories did not have to be certified to the ICC 700-2008 National Green Building Standard but did have to be scored to the standard using the National Green Building Program’s online Green Scoring Tool.
Single-family home specialists
Among the individual-project winners, Tall Pines Construction, based in Park City, Utah, took a Project of the Year award in the Single-Family Custom Home category for Sungazing House, a 3,720-sq.-ft. home that includes extensive insulation, a high level of airtightness, quadruple-glazed windows from Serious Windows’ 925 series, and a north wall –18 ft. high and almost 100 ft. long – that is constructed of 16-in.-thick concrete penetrated by 1.5-in. PVC tubes that are filled with 150 gallons of phase-change material (a special wax) to increase the wall’s thermal mass.
The Bay-Waveland chapter of Habitat for Humanity, in Mississippi, landed a Project of the Year award in the Affordable Single-Family category. Like many Habitat affiliates developing strategies for building affordable energy-efficient homes, Bay-Waveland has completed a couple projects that hew strongly to green construction, including a home that earned a Platinum rating under LEED for Homes and one that earned an Emerald rating under the NGBS system – the first such project in Mississippi to do so.
The other Project of the Year winners in the single-family category were production builder Imagine Homes of San Antonio, Texas; Zero-Energy Plans LLC, of Coupeville, Washington, for its concept and research services; and small-volume builder Imery Group, of Athens, Georgia.
Remodeling and multifamily
Sun Mountain Construction of Corrales, New Mexico, earned an award for a remodeling project in the $100,000-plus price category, while Ferrier Custom Homes of Fort Worth, Texas, won for a remodel under $100,000 – a renovation of a 1938 to greater energy efficiency and considerably greater comfort. Ferrier attracted attention last year for a 1,051-sq.-ft. new-home project called the Zero Energy Casita, which was designed not only for a high level of energy efficient performance but also to make extensive use of salvaged material. Construction costs on that project came in at around $312,000.
In the multifamily low-rise (four stories or fewer) category, Actus Lend Lease won a Project of the Year for Campbell Crossing Zero Energy Homes at Fort Campbell, an Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border that is home to the 101st Airborne Division and among the first U.S. military installations to include a net-zero-energy multifamily building among its residential projects.
Green-building advocacy
Advocacy awards, as NAHB notes, recognize accomplishments in a number of areas, including initiatives taken to bring green building practices into the mainstream; educational programs and/or marketing efforts geared toward homebuilders or consumers; direct impact on the number of green homes constructed in the past year; grassroots and volunteer efforts to help further green building; and lifetime achievements in green building.
Addison Homes of Greer, South Carolina, won the Advocate of the Year award in the Builder category; Philip Beere of Green Street Development in Scottsdale, Arizona, won in the Remodeler category; Dr. Jennifer Languell of Trifecta Construction Solutions, in Fort Myers, Florida, was honored as the Individual Advocate of the Year; the Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa, Oklahoma, won in the Home Builders Association category; and the Home Builders Association of Middle Tennessee’s Green Building Council and the Habitat for Humanity chapter of Williamson County, Tennessee, won in the Group category.
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A three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home built by Imery Group, of Athens, Georgia, which won a National Green Building Award – Project of the Year, in the Small-Volume single-family builder category – at NAHB’s 13th annual National Green Building Conference in Salt Lake City. The home is designed to qualify for Platinum certification under the EarthCraft green building program. The property is listed for $189,500.
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The retrofit of this 1938 home in Fort Worth earned Ferrier Custom Homes a Project of the Year award for remodeling projects costing $100,000 or less.
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This Habitat for Humanity Bay-Waveland project – a 1,250-sq.-ft. three-bedroom completed in 2009 in Bay St. Louis – was the first in Mississippi to qualify for an Emerald rating under the National Green Building Standard. The Bay-Waveland chapter of Habitat won a Project of the Year award in the affordable-single-family category.
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Project of the Year, the Sungazing House is truly an excellent piece of green real estate. I like the design flow of the construction, also the way water conservation was solved. Pity, there are no more pictures of the house with its wider surrounding available online. I was surprised that it really is located in the middle of the desert! I found the Sungazing House project very tolerant considering surrounding nature and well fitting its landscape. Worth noticing, for sure.